A little later today I will be posting about Yoav Shamir’s documentary, Defamation, which had its American premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival last night. I wuz there. Beautiful movie. Wrenching, important, altogether engaged with Jewish identity/Israeli brutality. And due…
Jon Chait in the New Republic: “the Gaza incursion was a moral and strategic disaster.” I have no desire to read the piece. As Dan Luban, my tipster, writes, “With Walzer, Wieseltier, and now Chait, seems like this is becoming…
Earlier today I quoted Dan Luban saying that Jeffrey Goldberg is the most important Jewish journalist in America. A friend disagrees: Jeff Goldberg is not the most influential or important Jewish Journalist. Brooks, Broder, Krugman, Krauthammer, David Remnick, Sy Hersh,…
Anees of Jerusalem writes to me: Another North American college professor, Margo Ramlal-Nankoe of Ithaca College, alleges pro-Zionist prejudice was the reason behind her career block. Norman Finkelstein is quoted saying that it’s a case of “tenure tragedy”: “It simply…
More on the crisis of Jewish identity. Yesterday I did a post about my own efforts to transcend identity politics and adjust to a diverse American culture in the age of Obama, in which young people don’t see race and…
Larry Derfner in the Jerusalem Post, exonerating Caryl Churchill’s playlet, 7 Jewish Children, of the charge of anti-Semitism, and saying it’s just critical enough of Israel for Gaza. And re the climactic voice in the play, of the Jewish mother…
Young Daniel Luban is a fine writer. Here he is on Iran, on Jim Lobe’s blog: I do not personally know whether [Roger] Cohen considers Israel and the U.S. to be an “existential threat” to Iran, but I would certainly…
Great piece by David Bromwich on Huffpo calling for a full investigation of the torture-orderers, so as to establish why they did it, and to prevent the repetition of such power-grabs. Names Jane Harman as a rationalizer of torture: “I’m…
Journalist Noam Sheizaf writes for the daily Israeli newspaper Maariv and has a blog called Promised Land. His most recent post is a useful response to anyone who thinks that things in Israel/Palestine would be different “if only the Palestinians…